MCALESTER ARMY AMMUNITION PLANT, Okla. -- As part of munitions readiness, McAlester Army Ammunition Plant reworks obsolete and unserviceable D563 projectile bodies and turns them into DA51 155mm High Explosive (Insensitive Munition) training rounds to meet Army training requirements.
The demand is high for these training rounds which is the Army's and Marine Corps' standard projectile for howitzers -- the Army fires about 150,000 of them annually -- and that's where the Joint Munitions Command and MCAAP provides support.
JMC's Sustainment Production Directorate coordinates with MCAAP to expedite transferring these quantities to support urgent training requirements.
"Soldiers having the right ammunition for training directly drives Army readiness, and ready Soldiers win on the battlefield," said MCAAP Commanding Officer, Col. Shane M. Upton. "Winning matters."
MCAAP reworks the 155mm projectile body and base, removes and demilitarizes the sub-munitions inside the Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition round, and loads, assembles and packs the new round.
"Projectile re-use" is an initiative funded by the Project Manager-Combat Ammunition Systems Conventional Ammunition, and Product Manager for Demilitarization, which operate at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey. The initiative has realized $79 million in savings from Fiscal Years 2012 to 2020. The download of the 155mm projectiles is managed at MCAAP by Jared Howard, and is funded by PD-DEMIL.
MCAAP consistently provides these high-quality rounds, on time, to the Warfighter. Ballistics Lot Acceptance Testing was recently and successfully conducted at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., of MCAAP's M1122 production quantities to support the Army program.
"This added an additional 18,000 rounds to the Army's inventory," said MCAAP's M1122 LAP Program Manager, Stephen Morgan. "To date, MCAAP has LAP'd more than 220,000 rounds from FY 2012 to present. During FY 2020-21, we will LAP an additional 100,000 rounds."
McAlester Army Ammunition Plant is a Department of Defense bomb- and warhead-loading facility. It is one of 17 installations of the Joint Munitions Command and one of 23 organic industrial bases under the U.S. Army Materiel Command, which include arsenals, depots, activities and ammunition plants. MCAAP is an important element in ammunition stockpile management and delivery to the Joint Warfighter for training and combat operations to provide lethality that wins.
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